


you're the reason

by TheRealFailWhale



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Crazy Spike, Psychological Torture, Verbal Abuse, reference to attempted rape, references to seeing red, spike is eating rats, the first is torturing him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23131465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRealFailWhale/pseuds/TheRealFailWhale
Summary: The First torments Spike. Set during "Lessons."
Relationships: Spike & Buffy Summers, The First Evil & Spike
Kudos: 13





	you're the reason

_Bright fluorescent light. Cool linoleum. Steaming water. Soft cloth. Tan skin. Fearful eyes. A breaking, pleading voice. Scrabbling hands. The crack of bone against ceramic. And then…_

He woke, heart thrumming wildly, and launched himself across the room until he met the resistance of a concrete wall. The sickening crunch of his nose rang in his ears as he slid down the rough surface to huddle on the ground, curling in on himself and retreating into the nearby corner.

“You did it again, you piece of shit.”

The voice that pleaded with him in his dreams, had pleaded for weeks, spoke now from the pitiful nest he’d made in the room.

“Never did it,” he mumbled, cradling his head in his hands, pulling slightly on his greasy curls.

“Of course you did,” the voice retorted. “Just like always, you took what you wanted, breaking whatever was in your way.”

“Didn’t happen that way,” he said, more to himself than the voice, desperately hoping that the voice was wrong and he could trust his own mind in this, even if nothing else.

“How would you know? You’re too crazy to even feed yourself. What makes you think your memory is telling the truth?”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up.” His muttered mantra streamed from his mouth in an unending wave, drowning out the words that the voice tried to press into his ears.

“Look at me.”

He heard them over his hissed commandsentreaties and couldn’t stop his chin from rising from his knees.

There she crouched, blonde hair hanging like a curtain around a window, if the window looked out on a dark expanse of horror and cruelty. She smiled.

“You raped me,” said his nightmare Buffy. It wasn’t the real Buffy, though that had taken him too long to figure out. Now he knew it was just the Buffy in his mind, the one who would never let him forget what he’d done.

“ _No_ ,” he insisted. “What I _tried_ to do, didn’t do it, wasn’t done, didn’t happen.”

“Listen to you,” Buffy said scathingly, rising gracefully from her crouch and coming to stand in front of him. She had no scent, not like the real Buffy. “Do you hear how insane you sound? You. Raped. Me.”

“DIDN’T!” he roared, striking out with his handsclaws and meeting nothing but air. She wasn’t real, he knew she wasn’t real, but she goaded him so hard, so often, that sometimes he let himself forget and try to take his rage out on her.

“Look at you. See, this is what I’m talking about,” she said as he lay sprawled on the floor behind her, having drifted straight through her image. “So full of rage and need that you don’t think about your actions. That’s what made you rape me.”

“I didn’t,” he whispered into the concrete, curling into himself once again. “Didn’t do it. You stopped me. Hurt me.”

“Oh please. You’re the one who did the hurting. I mean, just look at me.”

Helpless to disobey, he raised his head and saw that she was seated in front of him, pantsless. Her tan legs, covered in golden down, led up up until they joined her hips and along the inside of her thighs were scratches. Long, angry red lines where nailshisnailsclaws had dragged against the skin in a mad rush for release.

“This was you,” she pointed out coldly, running her palm over the marked flesh.

He could think of no words. He turned his face away and wept.

* * *

“Do you know how ridiculous you look?”

Buffy was back, watching him as he gnawed open the neck of a rat and sucked what little blood it had from its veins. It wasn’t enough, would never be enough, but he felt safetrapped in this concrete maze and would not venture out.

He tried to ignore her, nose buried in the rat’s dirty fur.

“You once made fun of Angelus for eating rats, and here you are, no better than him.”

She’d been making ceaseless attempts to draw out his rage today (or was it night he didn’t knowcare) but so far he’d only tried to strangle the apparition once, to her amusement. Her laughter had followed him through the halls as he sniffed out breakfastlunchdinnerwhoknew.

His wanderings had brought him close to sounds of something else, something not-food, something Buffy called a spirit raised by a talisman, not that he’d askedcared. He skirted the halls that smelled of humans. No one was supposed to be down here.

“Do you hear that?”

He raised his head and saw that Buffy was turned away, looking down the hall. He saw nothing, but felt his ears prick as he heard what she was talking about.

“Fuck that,” he muttered, and scurried to the small room he’d claimed for his nest, shutting the door just as he saw the first sign of decayed-looking humans down the other end.

“What, you don’t want to put up a fight? Protect yourself? Take all that anger out on something that’ll actually hurt?” Buffy taunted. “I mean if you can’t hurt me, your favorite thing, I know, you might as well get something.”

“Shut up,” he said quietly as the spirits--physical enough to affect the world--slammed into his door. He darted forward and seized the handle, holding it close against their attempts.

“How cute,” Buffy said delightedly. “Little boy doesn’t want to play today.”

He kept silent, keeping his hands glued to the door. The spirits were strong, pulling hard on the door. Abruptly they stopped, but only for a second as the door was wrenched from his grasp by a stronger arm than his.

He slipped away from the door, curling himself into a corner. Buffy was there--though she couldn’t have opened the door--and looked around with frustration.

“You’re in for a treat,” came a whisper in his ear, and turning his head he saw Buffy. Except Buffy was still standing in the doorway, still searching the room with her eyes.

He couldn’t stop the strangled sob from eking out of his lips, and he watched as Buffy’s head snapped around to where he was tucked away. He hid his face. Maybe it wasn’t the real Buffy. Maybe his nightmare Buffy was able to have multiple manifestations now. Just what he needed.

“Spike?”

He started. His Buffy never said his name, didn’t think he deserved one. This Buffy was looking at him, not seeing the Buffy still crouched next to him.

“You raped her,” nightmare Buffy murmured.

He whimpered, trying to shrink further into himself.

“Spike, what are you doing down here?”

The words didn’t come from the voice next to him, but from the other one. The real one?

“Didn’t do it,” he muttered to himselftoherto _her_.

“Spike. What--” Buffy began but he pushed himself up from his squat and faced her, feeling his heart pound in his chest. She didn’t look the same as his Buffy. Her hair was a little longer, a little more golden. His eyes dropped briefly to her thighs, wondering if she had the same scratches on her skin as his did.

“Spike, what did you do?” she asked, voice quiet and filled with revulsion. She took a step toward him and stretched out a hand to his chest. He jerked back, wrapping his arms around his torso.

“Tried to take it out. It hurt and she said it was that, so I tried to take it out, didn’t I? Couldn’t get to it though…”

He picked at the bloody mess that scarred his chest. Buffy--his Buffy--hadn’t stopped taunting him when he tore at it.

“You look even more insane than usual, you shit,” his Buffy said, standing behind other Buffy with her arms crossed. “You’re lucky she hasn’t staked you yet. After what you did, you deserve it.”

“I didn’t do it!” he yelled at her over Buffy’s shoulder. The other Buffy narrowed her eyes.

“Didn’t do what? Didn’t kill those kids out there?” she demanded, crossing her arms in a mirror of his Buffy.

“That either,” he said, voice quiet again. “They’re just spirits after some vengeance, some sort of talisman deal. Ask her already.”

He turned around again, unwillingable to look at other Buffy.

“Spike, what is wrong with you?” she asked, as his Buffy said, “You don’t even have the balls to talk to her about it. To tell her that you’d do it again in an instant, like the sick fuck you are.”

“I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t,” he moaned, running fingers through his hair, pulling none too gently. “I never meant to do those things, I know I did it, but I didn’t do it properly or at all or whatever, but it won’t leave me, every day, every day I think about it, she won’t _let_ me forget, and it just FUCKING HURTS!”

His words were screaming out of him now, and his hands went back to his chest to try and tear it out againagainagain.

“Spike, stop!” Buffy came toward him and dragged his hands away, but the second her hands touched him, he stopped moving and collapsed to his knees with a gasp.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please, I did it for you, you’re the reason, it’s for you, but it hurts…” Tears were pouring down his face now and he felt Buffy let go of him, heard her take a step back, and then another.

“Disgusting,” Buffy’s voice said, and he didn’t know which one spoke, but either way it was true.

“I don’t have time for this, Spike,” she said, tone wary. “Whatever you’re doing down here, just don’t hurt anybody or I’ll be back.”

“You never left,” he whispered, curling into a ball once again. “In three months you haven’t left. Even though it was for you. I’m sorry…”

Skin scraping on the concrete, he listened to the door close and silence surrounded him. For a time.

“That was just embarrassing. I can’t believe you let her see you like that. What happened to the strong master vampire who swore he’d kill the Slayer?”

Too weak to do anything else, he lay there and listened as Buffy tore into him with words sharper than his own nails.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been building a Spike playlist on spotify and "The Reason" by Hoobastank is such a Spike song, so that's where the title and a few of the lines come from.


End file.
